Monday, 16 April 2018

NOKHUM-MOYSHE SIRKIN

NOKHUM-MOYSHE
SIRKIN (1878-December 24, 1918)

He was born in Byelsk (Bielsk),
Grodno district, at the time part of Russia.He received a Jewish education at home, also attended a Russian high
school, later graduating from the Warsaw Polytechnic as a technical
engineer.At the latter school he founded
a corporation of nationally minded students—running counter to the
assimilationist majority of students in the school.He belonged to a circle of Yiddish and Hebrew
writers in Warsaw and was a frequent visitor at the homes of Nokhum Sokolov and
Y. L. Perets, especially Sokolov who engaged Sirkin to contribute to Hatsfira (The siren), in which Sirkin
from time to time (from 1897) published articles, such as: a long essay, “An
effort at a theoretical justification for Zionism,” which at the time aroused great
interest among the readership.With the
rise of political Zionism, he became active in the movement, contributed much
to Zionist congresses as a delegate and also as the correspondent from Hatsfira.An outstanding speaker, he led a Zionist
campaign principally among intellectual youth.Under the influence of Y. L. Perets, he became an advocate of Yiddish,
and at Zionist meetings and conferences he fought for Yiddish and against the
truculence of the Hebraists.Aside from
his role with Hatsfira, he published
numerous articles in Sefer hashana
(Yearbook), as well as with the Russian Jewish Budushchnost’ (The future), Spektor’s Di naye velt (The new world) in Warsaw,
and Sokolov’s Telegraf (Telegraph),
of which he was in fact editor (1905-1907).In 1907 he settled in Kiev, where he conducted intensive work on behalf
of Yiddish and Yiddish literature, and his speeches, permeated with enthusiastic
love for Yiddish works, exerted a huge impact on Jewish youth then engaged in
their studies.He also published a
series of notices on Jewish writers in the Russian Jewish Evreiskaia entsiklopediya (Jewish encyclopedia).He published as well popular scientific
articles in the Russian journals: Vestnik
sakharnaia promyshlennost’ (Herald of the sugar industry) and Vodnoe delo (Water treatment) (1910),
among others.In the years of WWI, he
stood out as a political leader, was elected to the Ukrainian Rada (Parliament)
and to Jewish national council in Ukraine, and he became chairman of the
democratic Jewish community in Kiev, while at the same time writing
journalistic articles in the Zionist weekly Af
der vakh (On guard), edited by M. Grosman (ten issues appeared, from March
15 until August 9, 1918) and editing the daily newspaper Der telegraf (forty-nine issues, from November 15, 1917 to January
1918).He authored the pamphlets: In der frayer ukraine (In Ukraine of the
past), “remarks, facts, and materials” (Kiev: Farn folk, 1917), 16 pp.; Dos naye lebn un di alte knekht (The new
life and the old slave) (Kiev, 1917), 9-16 pp. (reprinted from Der telegraf, prospectus); Tsi zenenmir hefker? (Are we without order?) (Kiev, 1917), 9 pp.He was one of the few exceptions who in Zionist-Hebraist
circles did not stop fighting for Yiddish and who appreciated the Yiddish
word.He was also beloved by Ukrainian
intellectuals.He died in Kiev.